C: The Comfort of Drizzle

I guess it’s all in how you look at things…I woke up this morning hearing the rhythm of rain outside.  I knew it was coming.  I conned MIL into going out for spaghetti last night (enough left for lunch!), and it was beginning to drizzle as we made our way home.

This morning it isn’t the heavy storm type of rain, just a notch up from a drizzle; just enough for me to hear it.  It made me want to snuggle down in the bed, although I feel rested.

But, here I am at my early-morning computer session, listening to the pattering outside.  My on-line thermometer tells me that it is 50 degrees F outside, so it isn’t cold.  But the rain makes it feel cold…and the rain sound makes it feel like cold weather is coming.  It’s almost like it sounds different from sound of summertime rain.  This must be early-morning crazy, right?

Anyway, I’ve been sipping hot coffee, got my winter fuzzy houseshoes on, and my big, warm robe.  The dogs are contentedly snoozing rather than asking to go out.  And the sounds of winter coming outside are not bothersome to me but, rather a comfort.   Why?  Winter is easily the hardest season for me out here, what with power outages and muddy driveway, and on and on and on.

Still, there’s comfort. 

I think it is the comfort of rhythm.  Over my more-than-half-a-century-of-life, my life has developed a certain rhythm.  The Good Lord knows that during the last few years of my life, that rhythm has been violently interrupted, but things have calmed now.  I’m regaining that rhythm.  It helps me anticipate what lies ahead, to move ahead with the family holiday traditions I’ve come to love, to know that the challenges and coziness of winter are coming, but that spring is just behind it.   

I know this road.  I’ve traveled it before.

As I thought about the sounds of rain, I remembered a scene from Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen (this is in the book, not the movie that I can recall--and the book is better!!):

Karen had discovered that the Kikuyu tribe who lived on her property knew nothing of poetry.  She began to make up poems (nonsensical ones that relied only on rhyme and meter) in their language and recite them. 

The Kikuyu would gather around, silently and solemnly, listening to her.  They did not know of spoken cadence—as opposed to singing.  They were enchanted and would often approach her to ask her to recite. 

And the way they would ask just thrills me and seems so apropos to this morning:  “Please,” they would say, “Speak to us in the  language that sounds like rain.”

And so, in a little juxtaposition, I can say that this morning’s rain sounds like poetry to me .  The harbinger of winter is warm and comforting.

Let’s see if I can sustain this attitude as I drive through it to work…C